A month or so ago I started reading Julia Annas‘s excellent The Morality of Happiness – while visiting family in New York City. Because of the New York setting, I was particularly drawn to this passage:

It is also not surprising that ancient ethics, with one marginal exception, never develops anything like the related consequentialist idea of a maximizing model of rationality. If my ethical aim is to produce a good, or the best, state of affairs, then it is only rational to produce as much as possible of it. But ancient ethics does not aim at the production of good states of affairs, and so is not tempted to think that rationality should take the form of maximizing them. Rather, what I aim at is my living in a certain way, my making the best use of goods, and acting in some ways rather than others. None of these things can sensibly be maximized by the agent. Why would I want to maximize my acting courageously, for example? I aim at acting courageously when it is required. I have no need, normally, to produce as many dangerous situations as possible, in order to act bravely in them.

Why is this passage particularly striking in New York? Because as I discussed before, New York life is all about maximizing. You go to New York because you want the best of everything – for indeed, in New York you get the best of everything, at least if you can afford it. I like to talk about the great Thai food at a couple of restaurants back home in Boston, being as good as it is in Thailand, but these were blown away by a truly stunning Northeastern Thai restaurant that recently opened up in the East Village neighbourhood – the sauce on their laap was pure perfection. The Boston places are very good, but they can’t keep up. Nor is the Boston subway nearly as fast or as extensive; nor does a brand-new store selling cheap, quality, high-tech Japanese clothing open up all around the city. Nor are there browseable bookstores four storeys tall – one of which was the place where I purchased Annas’s book. And these are just examples I experienced on a four-day trip, with relatively limited funds – no attempt to, say, see Jon Stewart live.

But as I noted before, all this is just the problem. You go to New York because you want to have the best of everything – and that means you will always be wanting more. I remember, on one of my first trips to New York years ago, speaking to the New Yorker closest to me, who was already making an income likely higher than anything I’ll ever make – but spoke of his frustration that this was less than his MBA classmates. You don’t go to the place that has the best of everything if you’re the kind of person who is likely to be satisfied with the life you have. In the terms of Herbert Simon and Barry Schwartz, New Yorkers are maximizers rather than satisficers. And this, in turn, is probably why the people in this wonderland are the unhappiest in the United States.

Which brings me back to Julia Annas’s quote. Like Simon and Schwartz, she uses the language of “maximizing” – in her case, to describe what it is that “ancient philosophy” does not advocate. You can maximize your variety of food choices, but you can’t maximize courage. John Rawls popularized the highly unfortunate term perfectionism to describe virtue-focused ethical theories; it is an awful term, since virtue theories are in this respect the opposite of perfectionism in the usual sense of that word. Perfectionists, as we normally understand the term, are the consummate maximizers, never satisfied because they strive to make everything perfect, including themselves. But Annas is pointing out that the ancient Greeks and Romans from Aristotle onwards are very different from this: their philosophy cannot be put in terms of maximizing, not even the maximizing of virtue. Rather, try to live a flourishing life – a life with which you can be satisfied.

I think it’s important to stress and illustrate Annas’s point because it helps illustrate an alternative to consequentialism, the widespread view according to which the best actions can be defined in terms of bringing about the best total consequences. Consequentialism is the philosophy of maximizing, the worldview that built New York. (Philosophical utilitarianism, the most common variant of consequentialism, is a direct ancestor of modern economics.) The “ancient” view offers us something quite different, in a way that Rawls’s “perfectionism” concept obscures.

It’s important to have this alternative because consequentialism is so filled with problems. I think Schwartz and Simon point us to a paradox at the heart of consequentialism – at least of hedonistic forms of consequentialism, which is most of them. I’ve attempted to note this before: trying to maximize our own happiness is like trying to get to sleep; thinking about it gets in the way. But the same is true about maximizing others’ happiness. Happiness is there in the moment. At some point, you have to be happy with what you have now, and even with what others have now. Eventually, you are going to die; and if you keep trying to maximize, you are going to die unsatisfied. This was the point behind my rejection of utilitarianism: there’s a fundamental problem behind a life devoted to making others happy as possible, when doing so makes you unhappy yourself. If everybody lived the way you did, they would all fail at their goal.

It is true, as commenter Ethan C-F pointed out before, that we can realize a good for others that will come about after we’re gone, even if it too will eventually perish in the cosmos. But it seems to me that if we’re going to strive to benefit others, we need to see a good in the striving itself, in the doing of good works for others, and not in their consequences – successful or not. It is that attitude that allows us to be happy satisficers rather than miserable maximizers. I think that this point is what underlies the enduring popularity of the Bhagavad Gītā, the reason the pacifist Gandhi drew his inspiration from a text that advocates war: if you tie your happiness to the consequences of your actions, you will not be happy, and neither will anyone else who does so. I suspect that Jack Layton had figured out this lesson, which is why he was as inspiring as he was.

The Gītā’s worldview, to be sure, is quite different from Aristotle’s – all about adherence to an externally defined duty rather than the cultivation of flourishing. But they share the rejection of consequentialist maximizing; they are willing to let virtue be its own reward.

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10 thoughts on “The ancients in New York”

I think you are right. An orientation toward consequences is almost the definition of unhappiness — it is dissatisfaction with things as they are. It assumes that happiness is created by gathering and altering external circumstances.

I generally agree, but would add that it’s not quite that simple; you’re addressing two problems that are not quite the same. It does turn out pretty much that way in standard utilitarianism and similar philosophies, which do focus on external goods. On the other hand, it is possible to have a consequentialist orientation that doesn’t focus on the externals – working hard to be the best you can be so that you can be happier. Or even to do the same for others (some interpretations of Śāntideva, like Charles Goodman’s, read him this way). Rawls’s “perfectionism” concept is still not exactly right to describe such an orientation, but it fits that orientation better than it fits the ancient Greeks that Rawls applies it to.

The important question, I think, is whether the paradox of hedonism applies even when one recognizes that external circumstances are not the most important thing – whether one will be made unhappy by dissatisfaction with things as they are even within oneself. I have begun to think that that is in fact the case; that’s why I’ve become more sympathetic to sudden liberation (after thinking about some of your comments).

You make a good point. Buddhist texts divide materialism into three categories. These are described metaphorically as the “Three Lords of Materialism”.

The first is physical materialism, what you rightly point out as simple or superficial materialism — attachment to external, material goods or circumstances (wealth, etc.) as a source of validation of self worth.

The second is psychological or intellectual materialism. This involves attachment to belief systems as a source of comfort and solidity. This would include comfort in status situations of all types, whether the status is based on a career achievements or comfort in being a “born again” Christian.

The third is spiritual materialism. This involves attachment to states of mind and would include immersion in drug addiction, desire for new romantic love (which may not have much to do with actual connection on a deep level with another person), or attachment to a spiritual “high” achieved through prayer or meditation.

Yes. I believe the concept of “spiritual materialism” is Chögyam Trungpa’s recent coinage, but there are definitely warnings about something like it in much older texts, especially meditation texts – they warn against getting too caught up in the jhāna trance states.

Annas lives in Tucson (where I happen to live right now) and things are pretty laid back here. New York City is fun, but I think living there would be exhausting. Maybe you could say the same about Mumbai (there’s a book about Mumbai called “Maximum City”).

Does utilitarianism have to be so obsessively maximal? Could you maximize as much as possible and have realistic standards about what counts as possible? Or even downgrade “possible” in a literal sense to “as much as practical”? I wonder if some contemporary utilitarians have done this (I’m just not familiar with the literature). If you did that, utilitarianism wouldn’t be all that different than virtue theory in that you develop goodness as much as you reasonably can, but not too much, because obsessing too much will make you less virtuous and less happy.

Also, there’s something quite excessively maximal about Bodhisattva vows, but the vows themselves are pretty much impossible if taken literally. But the point seems to be to inspire a person rather than to actually intend it literally (unless my unenlightened mind just doesn’t understand). Could a utilitarian be like a Bodhisattva: taking a vow to maximize happiness while knowing that it is a literally impossible goal? “I vow to liberate/maximize happiness for infinite numbers of beings – wink, wink, nudge, nudge…”

I also haven’t seen a literature on that sort of “practical utilitarianism.” I imagine it has to be out there, since there are a lot of self-identified utilitarians out there, yet very, very few of them are willing to live up to the implications identified by the likes of Singer. More broadly, there are many ways that virtue ethics and consequentialism can shade into each other; there’s been a sustained debate going on in recent years about which one Śāntideva (and Buddhist ethics more generally) should count as. Philip Ivanhoe tries to split the difference by referring to Confucian ethics as “character consequentialism,” although given that he admits some goods are to be valued for their own sakes and not for their consequences, it seems very consequentialist to me.

As for the vows: don’t forget the context of karma and rebirth. The bodhisattva vow is supposed to be impossible to fulfill in this lifetime, but the promise is that if you keep going over the eons, eventually you’ll become a fully realized bodhisattva with some pretty badass super-powers.

In some sense, I think virtue theories are consequentialist: the goal (or consequence) is to be a virtuous person, which you reach by developing virtuous habits. Or think of it like this: Why do you do virtuous things? To be a virtuous person. Why be a virtuous person? It’s inherently good. Compare to: Why do you do good actions? To maximize happiness. Why desire happiness? It’s inherently desirable. The buck stops somewhere, even for consequentialists.

As for the Bodhisattva vow, if it is supposed to be literally infinite, then I don’t see how you can ever complete an infinite task even with infinite lifetimes. It seems to me that the whole thing is more emotional and inspirational. A student once asked me what Mahayana Buddhists think will happen after every being is liberated (the Buddhist version of Christian eschatology). I had no idea what to say. I’ve never heard of such a thing in Mahayana texts. Maybe if you think the universe is beginningless, you don’t think about it ending, either. But if that’s right, then a Bodhisattva vow will literally never be fulfilled (unless I’m simply conflating a modern mathematical notion of infinity with a pre-modern idea of just a really big number, which is entirely possible).

Ethan, your comment about the Bodhisattva Vow recalls the old joke: “What did one Bodhisattva say to the other as they stood at the gate of Nirvana?” Ans: “After you.”

The problem is that both you and Amod approach the question of virtue and the Bodhisattva aspiration from the point of view of relative truth: that our egos exist, that we are susceptible of improvement toward an ideal that we haven’t yet achieved, that time (past, present and future) exists.

However, central to the Mahayana teachings is shunyata or emptiness — a word that points to a non-conceptual understanding. Without this, Mahayana Buddhism is no different than any New Age self improvement program and there would be no such thing as realization or enlightenment since, as they say, the self can’t witness its own enlightenment.

Traditionally, the bodhisattva vow has two elements, the notion of aspiring and entering. As you point out, viewed from the level of relative truth, the Bodhisattva Vow is entirely inspirational or aspirational. It is the understanding of shunyata that allows the Bodhisattva Vow to be actualized.

That’s a great joke! Thanks for sharing. I’ll readily admit that I understand things from a deluded, unenlightened point of view. It seems that ANY talk at all about “Bodhisattvas” and “the path” has to be conventional. Non-Madhyamaka Buddhists could at least say that ultimately there are streams of skandhas that have causal relations with other streams of skandhas and that you could translate Bodhisattva talk into that ultimate language. I think Santideva ends up saying that really there are no “beings” who “suffer” and for that matter no “Bodhisattvas.” If that’s the case, then there can’t be any “fulfillment” of “vows” either. I remain agnostic about whether non-conceptual knowledge of emptiness is possible (or what it would even mean), but I tend to think that was a later addition in the tradition – Nagarjuna says little, if anything, about that. But whatever that would mean, it’s hard for my deluded mind to see how realization of emptiness would have much to do with fulfilling a Bodhisattva vow, except maybe that it would make you less attached. I should also disclose that I have a general allergy to the cosmic conception of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that developed in Mahayana, which makes me generally suspicious about things like Bodhisattva vows and resistant to taking such things literally, so take my delusions for what they’re worth.

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